Yukitomo Hamasaki, d+p (mAtter)

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mAtter is the brainchild of Tokyo´s Yukitomo Hamasaki and is more than a "mere" record label, gathering writers, architects, video artists as well as experimental electronic composers who design buildings and commercial products with as much seriousness as they invest in their music.

That there is no hierarchy or differentiation between genres is made apparent by the list of ”works” on its webpage, combining installations and record releases in simple chronological order. The ultimate goal is to redefine the place in which matter exists and ”construct dense space”.

Focusing strictly on the music, mAtter is quietly building up a small, challenging, but sturdy roster of releases. ”Scytale” is comprised of four pieces created in tandem by Shinkei and mise_en_scen, followed by three remixes. ”Cryptology” is a fitting name for both the first track and the album as a whole, as we are treated to collage-like tracks, mixing a soft underlying drone or high-pitched whistles conjured digitally with bits of business utilizing contact microphones and field recordings that may have just as well have been made in the kitchen as in the nearby woods. It is up to the listener to decode and understand. All four pieces are rather humble offerings and while meticulously constructed, not particularly engaging.

What do the remixers do with such open-ended raw material? Luigi Turra´s ”Agrandissement” of the first track follows the original quite closely before stirring up its contents in a great iron cauldron. TV Pow member Michael Hartman´s ”Dreaming Ascent Redux” fiddles a bit with the original bits and pieces before lifting it skyward with a confident and attractive electronic sweep. The onset of Yukitomo Hamasaki´s ”Asbt. B., No. 2” dovetails perfectly with the end of Hartman´s piece, before going off on its own, quiet tangent, laying down soft drones like barely-rung gongs and playing with static like one does with metal filings and a pocket magnet. All the artists involved in this project are deft with the small gesture, but in this company Hamasaki is the master.

Hawaiian Andy Graydon´s ”Geomancy” is a moody work puncuated with high-pitched frequencies disturbing an otherwise enjoyably somber listening experience which seems to embrace all the rumblings of the surface world - those of nature and those of industry. The seven-part piece is precise and surgical. The silences and near-silences are as significant as the overt sounds. The final section eases itself into a beautiful, crepuscular drone, really like hearing a slow, beautiful sunset.

Accompanying the CD is a DVD of Graydon´s video art, super 8 diptychs and triptychs and attractive abstractions exploring themes of place and displacement and featuring some of the acetates utilized in the making of the audio disc.

The most elegantly concise and representative work is Yukitomo Hamasaki´s own d + p both in visual, musical and philosophical manifestation. In a series of releases that could hardly be accused of excess, his is by far the most austere, from title and cover design to the untitled seven pieces within, which range from one to eleven minutes. They exist on the fringes of earshot. Hamasaki often erects a soundwave as hard, smooth and curved as the side of a Frank Gehrey building and impresses small, intimate, almost missable detail work along its edge. The occasional flash of static, like a bird sharply veering past a closed windown, rouses the listener from any possible torpar into which the music may have lulled him.

Sometimes, like on the sixth track, the only tangible thing the listener has recourse to is the air itself. Between the prickly electronic discharges of the closing track, you can heard angels sing.

http://www.matter.jp